"To make open web technologies a better basis for future applications on mobile and desktop alike, we need to keep pushing the envelope of the web to include - and in places exceed - the capabilities of the competing stacks in question.

"We want to… find the gaps that keep web developers from being able to build apps that are - in every way - the equals of native apps built for the iPhone, Android, and WP7."

Lofty intentions

Mozilla's Boot to Gecko has one simple aim: "to pursue the goal of building a complete, standalone operating system for the open web."

Mozilla will publish B2G's source code as it is developed, in a typically open source move from the Firefox developer.

Mozilla's plan is to take code from the lower levels of Google's Android OS and then to build a custom user interface and application stack based around Firefox's HTML rendering engine, Gecko.

It's early days for the project and the details are, as yet, a bit fuzzy, but stay tuned to hear a lot more from Mozilla about Boot to Gecko and its laudable intentions in the coming months.